Chapter 85
[Sidenote: The dead taken out of the house by a special opening made in a wall. Examples of the custom among Aryan peoples.]
When a certain king of Fiji died, the side of the house was broken down to allow the body to be carried out, though there were doorways wide enough for the purpose close at hand. The missionary who records the fact could not learn the reason of it.[729] The custom of taking the dead out of the house by a special opening, which is afterwards closed up, has not been confined to Fiji; on the contrary it has been practised by a mult.i.tude of peoples, savage, barbarous, and civilised, in many parts of the world. For example, it was an old Norse rule that a corpse might not be carried out of the house by the door which was used by the living; hence a hole was made in the wall at the back of the dead man's head and he was taken out through it backwards, or a hole was dug in the ground under the south wall and the body was drawn out through it.[730]
The custom may have been at one time common to all the Aryan or Indo-european peoples, for it is mentioned in other of their ancient records and has been observed by widely separated branches of that great family down to modern times. Thus, the Zend-Avesta prescribes that, when a death has occurred, a breach shall be made in the wall and the corpse carried out through it by two men, who have first stripped off their clothes.[731] In Russia "the corpse was often carried out of the house through a window, or through a hole made for the purpose, and the custom is still kept up in many parts."[732] Speaking of the Hindoos a French traveller of the eighteenth century says that "instead of carrying the corpse out by the door they make an opening in the wall by which they pa.s.s it out in a seated posture, and the hole is closed up after the ceremony."[733] Among various Hindoo castes it is still customary, when a death has occurred on an inauspicious day, to remove the corpse from the house not through the door, but through a temporary hole made in the wall.[734] Old German law required that the corpses of criminals and suicides should be carried out through a hole under the threshold.[735]
In the Highlands of Scotland the bodies of suicides were not taken out of the house for burial by the doors, but through an opening made between the wall and the thatch.[736]
[Sidenote: Examples of the custom among non-Aryan peoples.]
But widespread as such customs have been among Indo-european peoples, they have been by no means confined to that branch of the human race. It was an ancient Chinese practice to knock down part of the wall of a house for the purpose of carrying out a corpse.[737] Some of the Canadian Indians would never take a corpse out of the hut by the ordinary door, but always lifted a piece of the bark wall near which the dead man lay and then drew him through the opening.[738] Among the Esquimaux of Bering Strait a corpse is usually raised through the smoke-hole in the roof, but is never taken out by the doorway. Should the smoke-hole be too small, an opening is made in the rear of the house and then closed again.[739] When a Greenlander dies, "they do not carry out the corpse through the entry of the house, but lift it through the window, or if he dies in a tent, they unfasten one of the skins behind, and convey it out that way. A woman behind waves a lighted chip backward and forward, and says: 'There is nothing more to be had here.'"[740]
Similarly the Hottentots, Bechuanas, Basutos, Marotse, Barongo, and many other tribes of South and West Africa never carry a corpse out by the door of the hut but always by a special opening made in the wall.[741] A similar custom is observed by the maritime Gajos of Sumatra[742] and by some of the Indian tribes of North-west America, such as the Tlingit and the Haida.[743] Among the Lepchis of Sikhim, whose houses are raised on piles, the dead are taken out by a hole made in the floor.[744] Dwellers in tents who practise this custom remove a corpse from the tent, not by the door, but through an opening made by lifting up an edge of the tent-cover: this is done by European gypsies[745] and by the Koryak of north-eastern Asia.[746]
[Sidenote: The motive of the custom is a desire to prevent the ghost from returning to the house.]
In all such customs the original motive probably was a fear of the ghost and a wish to exclude him from the house, lest he should return and carry off the survivors with him to the spirit land. Ghosts are commonly credited with a low degree of intelligence, and it appears to be supposed that they can only find their way back to a house by the aperture through which their bodies were carried out. Hence people made a practice of taking a corpse out not by the door, but through an opening specially made for the purpose, which was afterwards blocked up, so that when the ghost returned from the grave and attempted to enter the house, he found the orifice closed and was obliged to turn away disappointed. That this was the train of reasoning actually followed by some peoples may be gathered from the explanations which they themselves give of the custom. Thus among the Tuski of Alaska "those who die a natural death are carried out through a hole cut in the back of the hut or _yarang_. This is immediately closed up, that the spirit of the dead man may not find his way back."[747] Among the Esquimaux of Hudson Bay "the nearest relatives on approach of death remove the invalid to the outside of the house, for if he should die within he must not be carried out of the door but through a hole cut in the side wall, and it must then be carefully closed to prevent the spirit of the person from returning."[748] Again, "when a Siamese is dead, his relations deposit the body in a coffin well covered. They do not pa.s.s it through the door but let it down into the street by an opening which they make in the wall. They also carry it thrice round the house, running at the top of their speed. They believe that if they did not take this precaution, the dead man would remember the way by which he had pa.s.sed, and that he would return by night to do some ill turn to his family."[749] In Travancore the body of a dead rajah "is taken out of the palace through a breach in the wall, made for the purpose, to avoid pollution of the gate, and afterwards built up again so that the departed spirit may not return through the gate to trouble the survivors."[750] Among the Kayans of Borneo, whose dwellings are raised on piles above the ground, the coffin is conveyed out of the house by lowering it with rattans either through the floor, planks being taken up for the purpose, or under the eaves at the side of the gallery. "In this way they avoid carrying it down the house-ladder; and it seems to be felt that this precaution renders it more difficult for the ghost to find its way back to the house."[751] Among the Cheremiss of Russia, "old custom required that the corpse should not be carried out by the door but through a breach in the north wall, where there is usually a sash-window. But the custom has long been obsolete, even among the heathen, and only very old people speak of it. They explain it as follows: to carry it out by the door would be to shew the _Asyren_ (the dead man) the right way into the house, whereas a breach in the wooden wall is immediately closed by replacing the beams in position, and thus the _Asyren_ would in vain seek for an entrance."[752] The Samoyeds never carry a corpse out of the hut by the door, but lift up a piece of the reindeer-skin covering and draw the body out, head foremost, through the opening. They think that if they were to carry a corpse out by the door, the ghost would soon return and fetch away other members of the family.[753] On the same principle, as soon as the Indians of Tumupasa, in north-west Bolivia, have carried a corpse out of the house, "they s.h.i.+ft the door to the opposite side, in order that the deceased may not be able to find it."[754] Once more, in Mecklenburg "it is a law regulating the return of the dead that they are compelled to return by the same way by which the corpse was removed from the house. In the villages of Picher, Bresegard, and others the people used to have movable thresholds at the house-doors, which, being fitted into the door-posts, could be shoved up. The corpse was then carried out of the house under the threshold, and therefore could not return over it."[755]
[Sidenote: Some people only remove in this manner the bodies of persons whose ghosts are especially feared.]
Even without such express testimonies to the meaning of the custom we may infer from a variety of evidence that the real motive for practising it is a fear of the ghost and a wish to prevent his return. For it is to be observed that some peoples do not carry out all their dead by a special opening, but that they accord this peculiar mode of removal only to persons who die under unlucky or disgraceful circ.u.mstances, and whose ghosts accordingly are more than usually dreaded. Thus we have seen that some modern Hindoo castes observe the custom only in the case of people who have died on inauspicious days; and that in Germany and the Highlands of Scotland this mode of removal was specially reserved for the bodies of suicides, whose ghosts are exceedingly feared by many people, as appears from the stringent precautions taken against them.[756] Again, among the Kavirondo of Central Africa, "when a woman dies without having borne a child, she is carried out of the back of the house. A hole is made in the wall and the corpse is ignominiously pushed through the hole and carried some distance to be buried, as it is considered a curse to die without a child. If the woman has given birth to a child, then her corpse is carried out through the front door and buried in the verandah of the house."[757] In Brittany a stillborn child is removed from the house, not by the door, but by the window; "for if by ill-luck it should chance otherwise, the mothers who should pa.s.s through that fatal door would bear nothing but stillborn infants."[758]
In Perche, another province of France, the same rule is observed with regard to stillborn children, though the reason for it is not alleged.[759] But of all ghosts none perhaps inspire such deep and universal terror as the ghosts of women who have died in childbed, and extraordinary measures are accordingly taken to disable these dangerous spirits from returning and doing a mischief to the living.[760] Amongst the precautions adopted to keep them at bay is the custom of carrying their corpses out of the house by a special opening, which is afterwards blocked up. Thus in Laos, a province of Siam, "the bodies of women dying in childbirth, or within a month afterwards, are not even taken out of the house in the ordinary way by the door, but are let down through the floor."[761] The Kachins of Burma stand in such fear of the ghosts of women dying in childbed that no sooner has such a death occurred than the husband, the children, and almost all the people in the house take to flight lest the woman's ghost should bite them. "The body of the deceased must be burned as soon as possible in order to punish her for dying such a death, and also in order to frighten her ghost (_minla_).
They bandage her eyes with her own hair and with leaves to prevent her from seeing anything; they wrap her in a mat, and they carry her out of the house, not by the ordinary door, but by an opening made for the purpose in the wall or the floor of the room where she breathed her last. Then they convey her to a deep ravine, where no one dares to pa.s.s; they lay her in the midst of a great pyre with all the clothes, jewellery, and other objects which belonged to her and of which she made use; and they burn the whole to cinders, to which they refuse the rites of sepulture. Thus they destroy all the property of the unfortunate woman, in order that her soul may not think of coming to fetch it afterwards and to bite people in the attempt."[762] Similarly among the Kayans or Bahaus of Central Borneo "the corpses of women dying in childbed excite a special horror; no man and no young woman may touch them; they are not carried out of the house through the front gallery, but are thrown out of the back wall of the dwelling, some boards having been removed for the purpose."[763] Indeed so great is the alarm felt by the Kayans at a miscarriage of this sort that when a woman labours hard in childbed, the news quickly spreads through the large communal house in which the people dwell; and if the attendants begin to fear a fatal issue, the whole household is thrown into consternation. All the men, from the chief down to the boys, will flee from the house, or, if it is night, they will clamber up among the beams of the roof and there hide in terror; and, if the worst happens, they remain there until the woman's corpse has been removed from the house for burial.[764]
[Sidenote: Sometimes the custom is observed when the original motive for it is forgotten.]
Sometimes, while the custom continues to be practised, the idea which gave rise to it has either become obscured or has been incorrectly reported. Thus we are told that when a death has taken place among the Indians of North-west America "the body is at once taken out of the house through an
These explanations of the custom are probably misinterpretations adopted at a later time when its original meaning was forgotten. For a custom often outlives the memory of the motives which gave it birth. And as royalty is very conservative of ancient usages, it would be no matter for surprise if the corpses of kings should continue to be carried out through special openings long after the bodies of commoners were allowed to be conveyed in commonplace fas.h.i.+on through the ordinary door. In point of fact we find the old custom observed by kings in countries where it has apparently ceased to be observed by their subjects. Thus among the Sakalava and Antimerina of Madagascar, "when a sovereign or a prince of the royal family dies within the enclosure of the king's palace, the corpse must be carried out of the palace, not by the door, but by a breach made for the purpose in the wall; the new sovereign could not pa.s.s through the door that had been polluted by the pa.s.sage of a dead body."[768] Similarly among the Maca.s.sars and Buginese of Southern Celebes there is in the king's palace a window reaching to the floor through which on his decease the king's body is carried out.[769]
That such a custom is only a limitation to kings of a rule which once applied to everybody becomes all the more probable, when we learn that in the island of Saleijer, which lies to the south of Celebes, each house has, besides its ordinary windows, a large window in the form of a door, through which, and not through the ordinary entrance, every corpse is regularly removed at death.[770]
[Sidenote: Another Fijian funeral custom.]
To return from this digression to Fiji, we may conclude with a fair degree of probability that when the side of a Fijian king's house was broken down to allow his corpse to be carried out, though there were doors at hand wide enough for the purpose, the original intention was to prevent the return of his ghost, who might have proved a very unwelcome intruder to his successor on the throne. But I cannot offer any explanation of another Fijian funeral custom. You may remember that in Fiji it was customary after the death of a chief to circ.u.mcise such lads as had reached a suitable age.[771] Well, on the fifth day after a chief's death a hole used to be dug under the floor of a temple and one of the newly circ.u.mcised lads was secreted in it. Then his companions fastened the doors of the temple securely and ran away. When the lad hidden in the hole blew on a sh.e.l.l-trumpet, the friends of the deceased chief surrounded the temple and thrust their spears at him through the fence.[772] What the exact significance of this curious rite may have been, I cannot even conjecture; but we may a.s.sume that it had something to do with the state of the late chief's soul, which was probably supposed to be lingering in the neighbourhood.
[Sidenote: Fijian notions concerning the other world and the way thither. The River of the Souls.]
It remains to say a little as to the notions which the Fijians entertained of the other world and the way thither. After death the souls of the departed were believed to set out for Bulu or Bulotu, there to dwell with the great serpent-shaped G.o.d Ndengei. His abode seems to have been generally placed in the Nakauvandra mountains, towards the western end of Viti Levu, the largest of the Fijian Islands. But on this subject the ideas of the people were, as might be expected, both vague and inconsistent. Each tribe filled in the details of the mythical land and the mythical journey to suit its own geographical position. The souls had generally to cross water, either the sea or a river, and they were put across it by a ghostly ferryman, who treated the pa.s.sengers with scant courtesy.[773] According to some people, the River of the Souls (_Waini-yalo_) is what mortals now call the Ndravo River. When the ghosts arrived on the bank, they hailed the ferryman and he paddled his canoe over to receive them. But before he would take them on board they had to state whether they proposed to s.h.i.+p as steerage or as cabin pa.s.sengers, and he gave them their berths accordingly; for there was no mixing up of the cla.s.ses in the ferry-boat; the ghosts of chiefs kept strictly to themselves at one end of the canoe, and the ghosts of commoners huddled together at the other end.[774] The natives of Kandavu, in Southern Fiji, say that on clear days they often see Bulotu, the spirit land, lying away across the sea with the sun s.h.i.+ning sweetly on it; but they have long ago given up all hope of making their way to that happy land.[775] They seem to say with the Demon Lover,
"O yonder are the hills of heaven Where you will never win."
[Sidenote: The place of embarcation for the ghosts.]
Though every island and almost every town had its own portal through which the spirits pa.s.sed on their long journey to the far country, yet there was one called Nai Thombothombo, which appears to have been more popular and frequented than any of the others as a place of embarcation for ghosts. It is at the northern point of Mbua Bay, and the ghosts shew their good taste in choosing it as their port to sail from, for really it is a beautiful spot. The foreland juts out between two bays. A shelving beach slopes up to precipitous cliffs, their rocky face mantled with a thick green veil of creepers. Further inland the shade of tall forest trees and the softened gloom cast by crags and rocks lend to the scene an air of solemnity and hallowed repose well fitted to impress the susceptible native mind with an awful sense of the invisible beings that haunt these sacred groves. Natives have been known to come on pilgrimage to the spot expecting to meet ghosts and G.o.ds face to face.[776]
[Sidenote: The ghost and the panda.n.u.s tree.]
Many are the perils and dangers that beset the Path of the Souls (_Sala Ni Yalo_). Of these one of the most celebrated is a certain panda.n.u.s tree, at which every ghost must throw the ghost of the real whale's tooth which was placed for the purpose in his hand at burial. If he hits the tree, it is well for him; for it shews that his friends at home are strangling his wives, and accordingly he sits down contentedly to wait for the ghosts of his helpmeets, who will soon come hurrying to him. But if he makes a bad shot and misses the tree, the poor ghost is very disconsolate, for he knows that his wives are not being strangled, and who then will cook for him in the spirit land? It is a bitter thought, and he reflects with sorrow and anger on the ingrat.i.tude of men and especially of women. His reflections, as reported by the best authority, run thus: "How is this? For a long time I planted food for my wife, and it was also of great use to her friends: why then is she not allowed to follow me? Do my friends love me no better than this, after so many years of toil? Will no one, in love to me, strangle my wife?"[777]
[Sidenote: Hard fate of unmarried ghosts.]
But if the lot of a married ghost, whose wives have not been murdered, is hard, it is nevertheless felicity itself compared to the fate of bachelor ghosts. In the first place there is a terrible being called the Great Woman, who lurks in a shady defile, ready to pounce out on him; and if he escapes her clutches it is only to fall in with a much worse monster, of the name of Nangganangga, from whom there is, humanly speaking, no escape. This ferocious goblin lays himself out to catch the souls of bachelors, and so vigilant and alert is he that not a single unmarried Fijian ghost is known to have ever reached the mansions of the blest. He sits beside a big black stone at high-water mark waiting for his prey. The bachelor ghosts are aware that it would be useless to attempt to march past him when the tide is in; so they wait till it is low water and then try to sneak past him on the wet sand left by the retiring billows. Vain hope! Nangganangga, sitting by the stone, only smiles grimly and asks, with withering sarcasm, whether they imagine that the tide will never flow again? It does so only too soon for the poor ghosts, driving them with every breaking wave nearer and nearer to their implacable enemy, till the water laps on the fatal stone, and then he grips the s.h.i.+vering souls and dashes them to pieces on the big black block.[778]
[Sidenote: The Killer of Souls.]
Again, there is a very terrible giant armed with a great axe, who lies in wait for all and sundry. He makes no nice distinction between the married and the unmarried, but strikes out at all ghosts indiscriminately. Those whom he wounds dare not present themselves in their damaged state to the great G.o.d Ndengei; so they never reach the happy fields, but are doomed to roam the rugged mountains disconsolate.
However, many ghosts contrive to slip past him unscathed. It is said that after the introduction of fire-arms into the islands the ghost of a certain chief made very good use of a musket which had been providentially buried with his body. When the giant drew near and was about to lunge out with the axe in his usual style, the ghost discharged the blunderbuss in his face, and while the giant was fully engaged in dodging the hail of bullets, the chief rushed past him and now enjoys celestial happiness.[779] Some lay the scene of this encounter a little beyond the town of Nambanaggatai; for it is to be remembered that many of the places in the Path of the Souls were identified with real places in the Fijian Islands. And the name of the giant is Samu-yalo, that is, the Killer of Souls. He artfully conceals himself in some mangrove bushes just beyond the town, from which he rushes out in the nick of time to fell the pa.s.sing ghosts. Whenever he kills a ghost, he cooks and eats him and that is the end of the poor ghost. It is the second death.
The highway to the Elysian fields runs, or used to run, right through the town of Nambanaggatai; so all the doorways of the houses were placed opposite each other to allow free and uninterrupted pa.s.sage to the invisible travellers. And the inhabitants spoke to each other in low tones and communicated at a little distance by signs. The screech of a paroquet in the woods was the signal of the approach of a ghost or ghosts; the number of screeches was proportioned to the number of the ghosts,--one screech, one ghost, and so on.[780]
[Sidenote: A trap for unwary ghosts.]
Souls who escape the Killer of Souls pa.s.s on till they come to Naindelinde, one of the highest peaks of the Kauvandra mountains. Here the path ends abruptly on the brink of a precipice, the foot of which is washed by a deep lake. Over the edge of the precipice projects a large steer-oar, and the handle is held either by the great G.o.d Ndengei himself or, according to the better opinion, by his deputy. When a ghost comes up and peers ruefully over the precipice, the deputy accosts him.
"Under what circ.u.mstances," he asks, "do you come to us? How did you conduct yourself in the other world?" Should the ghost be a man of rank, he may say, "I am a great chief. I lived as a chief, and my conduct was that of a chief. I had great wealth, many wives, and ruled over a powerful people. I have destroyed many towns, and slain many in war."
"Good, good," says the deputy, "just sit down on the blade of that oar, and refresh yourself in the cool breeze." If the ghost is unwary enough to accept the invitation, he has no sooner seated himself on the blade of the oar with his legs dangling over the abyss, than the deputy-deity tilts up the other end of the oar and precipitates him into the deep water, far far below. A loud smack is heard as the ghost collides with the water, there is a splash, a gurgle, a ripple, and all is over. The ghost has gone to his account in Murimuria, a very second-rate sort of heaven, if it is nothing worse. But a ghost who is in favour with the great G.o.d Ndengei is warned by him not to sit down on the blade of the oar but on the handle. The ghost takes the hint and seats himself firmly on the safe end of the oar; and when the deputy-deity tries to heave it up, he cannot, for he has no purchase. So the ghost remains master of the situation, and after an interval for refreshment is sent back to earth to be deified.[781]
[Sidenote: Murimuria, an inferior sort of heaven. The Fijian Elysium.]
In Murimuria, which, as I said, is an inferior sort of heaven, the departed souls by no means lead a life of pure and unmixed enjoyment.
Some of them are punished for the sins they committed in the flesh. But the Fijian notion of sin differs widely from ours. Thus we saw that the ghosts of men who did no murder in their lives were punished for their negligence by having to pound muck with clubs. Again, people who had not their ears bored on earth are forced in Hades to go about for ever bearing on their shoulders one of the logs of wood on which bark-cloth is beaten out with mallets, and all who see the sinner bending under the load jeer at him. Again, women who were not tattooed in their life are chased by the female ghosts, who scratch and cut and tear them with sharp sh.e.l.ls, giving them no respite; or they sc.r.a.pe the flesh from their bones and bake it into bread for the G.o.ds. And ghosts who have done anything to displease the G.o.ds are laid flat on their faces in rows and converted into taro beds. But the few who do find their way into the Fijian Elysium are blest indeed. There the sky is always cloudless; the groves are perfumed with delicious scents; the open glades in the forest are pleasant; there is abundance of all that heart can desire. Language fails to describe the ineffable bliss of the happy land. There the souls of the truly good, who have murdered many of their fellows on earth and fed on their roasted bodies, are lapped in joy for ever.[782]
[Sidenote: Fijian doctrine of transmigration.]
Nevertheless the souls of the dead were not universally believed to depart by the Spirit Path to the other world or to stay there for ever.
To a certain extent the doctrines of transmigration found favour with the Fijians. Some of them held that the spirits of the dead wandered about the villages in various shapes and could make themselves visible or invisible at pleasure. The places which these vagrant souls loved to haunt were known to the people, who in pa.s.sing by them were wont to make propitiatory offerings of food or cloth. For that reason, too, they were very loth to go abroad on a dark night lest they should come bolt upon a ghost. Further, it was generally believed that the soul of a celebrated chief might after death enter into some young man of the tribe and animate him to deeds of valour. Persons so distinguished were pointed out and regarded as highly favoured; great respect was paid to them, they enjoyed many personal privileges, and their opinions were treated with much consideration.[783]
[Sidenote: Few souls saved under the old Fijian dispensation.]
On the whole, when we survey the many perils which beset the way to the Fijian heaven, and the many risks which the souls of the dead ran of dying the second death in the other world or of being knocked on the head by the living in this, we shall probably agree with the missionary Mr. Williams in concluding that under the old Fijian dispensation there were few indeed that were saved. "Few, comparatively," he says, "are left to inhabit the regions of Mbulu, and the immortality even of these is sometimes disputed. The belief in a future state is universal in Fiji; but their superst.i.tious notions often border upon transmigration, and sometimes teach an eventual annihilation."[784]
[Sidenote: Concluding observations.]
Here I must break off my survey of the natural belief in immortality among mankind. At the outset I had expected to carry the survey further, but I have already exceeded the usual limits of these lectures and I must not trespa.s.s further on your patience. Yet the enquiry which I have opened seems worthy to be pursued, and if circ.u.mstances should admit of it, I shall hope at some future time to resume the broken thread of these researches and to follow it a little further through the labyrinth of human history. Be that as it may, I will now conclude with a few general observations suggested by the facts which I have laid before you.
[Sidenote: Strength and universality of the natural belief in immortality among savages. Wars between savage tribes spring in large measure from their belief in immortality. Economic loss involved in sacrifices to the dead.]
In the first place, then, it is impossible not to be struck by the strength, and perhaps we may say the universality, of the natural belief in immortality among the savage races of mankind. With them a life after death is not a matter of speculation and conjecture, of hope and fear; it is a practical certainty which the individual as little dreams of doubting as he doubts the reality of his conscious existence. He a.s.sumes it without enquiry and acts upon it without hesitation, as if it were one of the best-ascertained truths within the limits of human experience. The belief influences his att.i.tude towards the higher powers, the conduct of his daily life, and his behaviour towards his fellows; more than that, it regulates to a great extent the relations of independent communities to each other. For the state of war, which normally exists between many, if not most, neighbouring savage tribes, springs in large measure directly from their belief in immortality; since one of the commonest motives for hostility is a desire to appease the angry ghosts of friends, who are supposed to have perished by the baleful arts of sorcerers in another tribe, and who, if vengeance is not inflicted on their real or imaginary murderers, will wreak their fury on their undutiful fellow-tribesmen. Thus the belief in immortality has not merely coloured the outlook of the individual upon the world; it has deeply affected the social and political relations of humanity in all ages; for the religious wars and persecutions, which distracted and devastated Europe for ages, were only the civilised equivalents of the battles and murders which the fear of ghosts has instigated amongst almost all races of savages of whom we possess a record. Regarded from this point of view, the faith in a life hereafter has been sown like dragons' teeth on the earth and has brought forth crop after crop of armed men, who have turned their swords against each other. And when we consider further the gratuitous and wasteful destruction of property as well as of life which is involved in sacrifices to the dead, we must admit that with all its advantages the belief in immortality has entailed heavy economical losses upon the races--and they are practically all the races of the world--who have indulged in this expensive luxury. It is not for me to estimate the extent and gravity of the consequences, moral, social, political, and economic, which flow directly from the belief in immortality. I can only point to some of them and commend them to the serious attention of historians and economists, as well as of moralists and theologians.
[Sidenote: How does the savage belief in immortality bear on the question of the truth or falsehood of that belief in general? The answer depends to some extent on the view we take of human nature. The view of the grandeur and dignity of man.]
My second observation concerns, not the practical consequences of the belief in immortality, but the question of its truth or falsehood. That, I need hardly say, is an even more difficult problem than the other, and as I intimated at the outset of the lectures I find myself wholly incompetent to solve it. Accordingly I have confined myself to the comparatively easy task of describing some of the forms of the belief and some of the customs to which it has given rise, without presuming to pa.s.s judgment upon them. I must leave it to others to place my collections of facts in the scales and to say whether they incline the balance for or against the truth of this momentous belief, which has been so potent for good or ill in history. In every enquiry much depends upon the point of view from which the enquirer approaches his subject; he will see it in different proportions and in different lights according to the angle and the distance from which he regards it. The subject under discussion in the present case is human nature itself; and as we all know, men have formed very different estimates of themselves and their species. On the one hand, there are those who love to dwell on the grandeur and dignity of man, and who swell with pride at the contemplation of the triumphs which his genius has achieved in the visionary world of imagination as well as in the realm of nature.
Surely, they say, such a glorious creature was not born for mortality, to be snuffed out like a candle, to fade like a flower, to pa.s.s away like a breath. Is all that penetrating intellect, that creative fancy, that vaulting ambition, those n.o.ble pa.s.sions, those far-reaching hopes, to come to nothing, to shrivel up into a pinch of dust? It is not so, it cannot be. Man is the flower of this wide world, the lord of creation, the crown and consummation of all things, and it is to wrong him and his creator to imagine that the grave is the end of all. To those who take this lofty view of human nature it is easy and obvious to find in the similar beliefs of savages a welcome confirmation of their own cherished faith, and to insist that a conviction so widely spread and so firmly held must be based on some principle, call it instinct or intuition or what you will, which is deeper than logic and cannot be confuted by reasoning.
[Sidenote: The view of the pettiness and insignificance of man.]
On the other hand, there are those who take a different view of human nature, and who find in its contemplation a source of humility rather than of pride. They remind us how weak, how ignorant, how short-lived is the individual, how infirm of purpose, how purblind of vision, how subject to pain and suffering, to diseases that torture the body and wreck the mind. They say that if the few short years of his life are not wasted in idleness and vice, they are spent for the most part in a perpetually recurring round of trivialities, in the satisfaction of merely animal wants, in eating, drinking, and slumber. When they survey the history of mankind as a whole, they find the record chequered and stained by folly and crime, by broken faith, insensate ambition, wanton aggression, injustice, cruelty, and l.u.s.t, and seldom illumined by the mild radiance of wisdom and virtue. And when they turn their eyes from man himself to the place he occupies in the universe, how are they overwhelmed by a sense of his littleness and insignificance! They see the earth which he inhabits dwindle to a speck in the unimaginable infinities of s.p.a.ce, and the brief span of his existence shrink into a moment in the inconceivable infinities of time. And they ask, Shall a creature so puny and frail claim to live for ever, to outlast not only the present starry system but every other that, when earth and sun and stars have crumbled into dust, shall be built upon their ruins in the long long hereafter? It is not so, it cannot be. The claim is nothing but the outcome of exaggerated self-esteem, of inflated vanity; it is the claim of a moth, shrivelled in the flame of a candle, to outlive the sun, the claim of a worm to survive the destruction of this terrestrial globe in which it burrows. Those who take this view of the pettiness and transitoriness of man compared with the vastness and permanence of the universe find little in the beliefs of savages to alter their opinion.
They see in savage conceptions of the soul and its destiny nothing but a product of childish ignorance, the hallucinations of hysteria, the ravings of insanity, or the concoctions of deliberate fraud and imposture. They dismiss the whole of them as a pack of superst.i.tions and lies, unworthy the serious attention of a rational mind; and they say that if such drivellings do not refute the belief in immortality, as indeed from the nature of things they cannot do, they are at least fitted to invest its high-flown pretensions with an air of ludicrous absurdity.
[Sidenote: The conclusion left open.]
Such are the two opposite views which I conceive may be taken of the savage testimony to the survival of our conscious personality after death. I do not presume to adopt the one or the other. It is enough for me to have laid a few of the facts before you. I leave you to draw your own conclusion.
[Footnote 701: Berthold Seeman, _Viti, an Account of a Government Mission to the Vitian or Fijian Islands_ (Cambridge, 1862), pp. 391 _sq._]